Seoul, South Korea, March 23, 2004

No GSM service, No English

As soon as an outsider arrives in South Korea you notice two things. Barely anyone speaks English and there is no GSM roving signal. Both are simple examples of the recent history of the isolation of South Korea from the rest of the world. This is not because of lack of technological sophistication of this far east country. On the contrary it is one of the more advanced technological countries. Its cell phone system is almost entirely domestic. S. Korea and Japan are the only developed countries that have a non GSM service. The educational system in Korea is also very well developed. High school students study from 8am till 9pm and then go home and study. The rumor in Korea is that High School students rarely get more than four to five hours of sleep. Travel and connections with the rest of the world is also rather new. Koreans were not allowed to travel outside south Korea until 1987. Continue Reading »

There is no doubt that Sheikh Yassin will be remembered for some time for his role in creating and leading the Islamic Hamas movement in Palestine . Yassin has taken a relatively weak branch of the Egyptian founded Muslim brotherhood and made it a power to reckon with. In order to do that, he had to deviate from the traditional political mode of the Brotherhood. The Muslim brotherhood in most Arab countries is relatively moderate and usually refrains from using arms against the ruling powers. Continue Reading »

It is often said that there is a time for everything. The meaning of such a saying is that when it is the time for war those who believe in peace should shut up. It is certainly difficult to talk when the sound of canons (and in our case apache killing missiles) drowns any other noise. But it can be just as easy to argue that at the height of intolerance, murder and anger voices of reason are even more needed to speak. Continue Reading »

For years whenever the PLO’s executive committee met, astute observers paid more attention to what happens the day before. Usually before important meetings of the PLO, crucial all night sessions of  the central committee of Fatah take place to set the framework for the more public PLO sessions. This traditional, in a slightly different form, has continued after the establishment of the Palestinian National Authority and the elections of the Palestinian Legislative Council. On the eve of the meetings of the Palestinian Legislative Council scheduled for Wednesday the 10^th of March, the Fatah caucus in the PLC met at the shelled out offices of the Palestinian president. Arafat, who is also the secretary general of Fatah called for the meeting to coordinate who will be the next speaker of the Palestinian parliament. The importance of this positions has added value because in the sudden absence of the president of the PNA, the speaker of parliament becomes president for a 60 day period until new elections can take place. Continue Reading »